By Shane Jones

Date / Venue: Tuesday September 19th, 2017 - The Foundry, Christchurch

I headed on down to The Foundry to see Portland Oregon's The Dandy Warhols play, this is my second time I've seen them live now - the first time was back in November 08 somewhat 9yrs ago at Westpac Arena (here in Christchurch), in a music festival called Southern Amp.

So before they come on, the support act takes the stage. A 4-piece band, originally from South Dunedin, now living in Auckland called Ha The Unclear. They play to a audience of about 250-350 people while the crowd is still rolling in they bang out a setlist of 8 songs from the three albums they currently have out. Ha The Unclear are a new wave indie, guitar pop band with Michael Cathro on guitar/vocals, Paul Cathro(Bass), Theo Francis(guitar) and Ben Sargeant (drums).

I really liked this band and I feel these guys are going places in the years to come, so keep an eye out for them, with song titles Secret Lives Of Furniture, It Follows, Kosmonavt, Bacterium, and Growing Mould it makes you wonder what other song titles they have up their sleeves.

A short intermission while the stage is cleared and final preparations are made for The Dandy Walhols. The background music fades out and the lights dim to a blue colour and then there's a "Hello Christchurch" as the Dandy Warhols present themselves on stage to a big cheer, and start playing Muhammad; the first of 15 songs of their set list from a discography of 6 outta 10 albums.

The colour of the lights change from song to song but usually stays that one colour for the whole song, next song being a red colour then next building up with two colours Blue and Green, which to me was a bit boring to take in visually.

I felt the music was to loud for the venue, don't get me wrong I love loud music, but it just drowned out Courtney's voice to resemble a mumble at times. The band members left the stage, to let Courtney to do a solo song 'Every Day Should Be A Holiday' (which wasn't on the set list) to then have his band mates return to the stage for 'Good Morning', and 'Holdin Me Up'.

The crowd attendance of approximately 550 people, just mellowed out and there wasn't much fist pumping and jumping or dancing around... probably due to the psychedelia-ness of the songs that were playing and the age groups of the audience. That was until the song 'We Used To Be Friends' started playing, then crowd woke up and started dancing and singing. Followed up by 'Bohemian Like You', another well known popular song that Vodafone used as a commercial. By this time the lighting had now well presented itself with bright halogen and strobe effects but was then mellowed out again for the final two songs.

Overall I think that everyone enjoyed the show, but I felt that the back lighting was a pain to clearly see the band members clearly as it formed shadows on the fronts of them until they turned side on.

I thought that Zia McCabe on keyboards is a wiz with the synthpop sound, while Peter Holmstrom'sbass playing was mesmerising, Brent DeBoer on Drums was powerful, and as I said earlier Courtney's mumbling voice was irritating to me but his guitar playing was on a different level.

Show lasted 1.5hrs and their next show is in Auckland at the Powerstation Wednesday 20th Sept with Ha The Unclear as support again, tickets thru www.aaaticketing.co.nz

Setlist:

Ha The Unclear

Kosmonavt

Secret Lives Of Furniture

It Follows

Growing Mould

Big City

Where Were You?

Bacterium

Mannequins

Dandy Warhols

Muhammad

Crack Cocaine Rager

Get Off

STYGGO

I Love You

Last High

Everyone Is Totally Insane

Every Day Should Be Like A Holiday

Good Morning

Holdin Me Up

You Are Killing Me

Used To Be Friends

Bohemian Like You

Godless

Boys

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL DANDY WARHOLS GALLERY BY SHANE JONES

Reviews

Concert Review - The Dandy Warhols - Christchurch -19th September 2017